


A Lesser Man

by lastofromance



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastofromance/pseuds/lastofromance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Anyone who’d spent more than mere moments beside Trafalgar Law would know immediately that there was more to the man than what appearances offered."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesser Man

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this months ago for tumblr (back in June, I think) and completely forgot about it until now! It was meant to be short, prose-y character exploration/comparison vignette that kind of took off a little and became its own short pairing fic.

Anyone who'd spent more than mere moments beside Trafalgar Law would know immediately that there was more to the man than what appearances offered. In his stance, the quiet strength in his razorblade posture (wadou-sharp) as though a fingertip drawn down the lines of slouched tension in the lower ends of his spine would slice clean through to the bone without actually breaking through skin, cutting only the necessary bits underneath. A brilliant surgeon, skilled with his nodachi to the extent that he could wield it in a one-handed grip, an apatheiatic intellect, a lover and a fighter -- too talented for his own fucking good -- too multifaceted to truly be human. Couldn't be human, but was. And the confidence he exuded through all things he undertook; not one thing, but everything; found Zoro completely, unadmittedly, and thoroughly fascinated.

To the extent that he could have been driven insane. If, that was, he were a lesser man.

He wasn't.

But there were times.  
Only at times.

It almost couldn't be helped.

Because Law made no sense to him at all, and while its said that men fear what they cannot understand by the very nature of the unknown, fear was a feeling that Roronoa Zoro had yet to meet when it translated from top to bottom in the scale of his emotional range to more useful things -- such was the way of his own nature. Challenge and pride, amusement at the best of times, thrill and excitement. Everyday, Zoro continuously pushed himself in his path to become the best swordsman and would be the best. Or, in his own words, until his name itself reached the heavens. Whereas Law had no such lofty ambitions -- inasmuch as he made subtle, nuanced assertions of having them, they were almost an afterthought of his contentment to languish beneath the stars with a steady gaze rather than shine among them. Perhaps he had already seen the 'ROOM' of his own heavens, divine and undisturbed, and too unwanting for victims that Law'd once alighted in boredom and never looked back. Perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps Zoro would never know his story and that was all the same to him, as stories aren't as telling as they seem. Everyone has a story --

Never does anyone tell the whole truth.

Because Law was impossible. So impassive and yet passionate, his surgical preciseness an art like any other, wrought by elegant and fine-boned hands, to the extent that the hearts he pushed clean from the chests of his foes and the arms and legs and heads he eviscerated and reorganized were more than mere casualties of battle. A doctor that could fight as though it were his lifeblood with the same amount of fervor behind the strength of his blade as there was in his scalpel, or perhaps even moreso. Yet effortlessly, as if just as much skill went into the battle as it might an operating room, and neither talents faltered for it. And that was impossible -- Zoro thought it impossible. A man had to pick and choose his talents wisely, choose his focus and the others would naturally diminish because a man who divides his passions could never truly master one or the other. The dedication spread itself out too thin -- why a 'Jack Of All Trades' was followed up with 'Master Of None'. But Law, nothing of his talent was thinned, only a thickness spreading further. Further and further out, out and down, down and under Zoro's skin and digging deep into the bone.

And quite neatly, he too, was split into where it didn't show. Not by any tangible force, but by that immovable razor-blade will. And where a lesser man could have been found it all too stunning to be real, Zoro's loose interpretation came in the form of stolidity as he struggled to maintain his ground.

The wounds of whatever it was that Law left him with never ached, but had him itching, the stubbed fingernails of his mind digging into that place he couldn't quite reach where only Law's fingers could touch. When reality eventually surfaced, it came to him in fell weapons and blood encircling him on the ground like some perverse ritual to the demon title that'd been bestowed upon him once or twice. There were times like this one, easing a katana away from his molars as the air hung heavier with the scent of iron than the steel in his hands, Law -- shouldering his nodachi in all of his unholy arrogant carriage -- had come to stand astride him in his wake of carnage.

The man smiled like he could help it when they both knew better.

"Ne, Zoro-ya, you're different when you know that I'm watching you," Law commented in a voice he only used towards Zoro (notedly, when no one else was watching), level and no particular emphasis nor flats in any given word, as usual, but the difference was in his own name. The 'ya' always came breathier, a little more drawn out. A drawl almost, but not quite -- provoking something in him that made his spine itch and his chest feel tight.

"Why the change?"

The observation was shrugged off as such: "Don't overthink it."

More and more, it seemed that Law was always watching.

There was a moment of self-antipathy in his mind at how often he was the subject of his thoughts, and whenever he wasn't, somehow -- as if sensing this -- promptly reasserted his presence by gracing himself physically like some kind of all-knowing shadow.

A reply didn't come immediate, and that was as expected as Law's attention span seemed to wane as was typical to him, drawn to sight of blood beneath his feet and the red shoe-prints he'd left behind. That was just as well, as Zoro took to flicking his blades clean from the remnants of a bar fight from hell; the blood of stupid brats who had no place provoking the swordsman out of bored complacency. The drinks were weak; the fighters, too. Yet, he found himself pressing a hand to the back of his neck, trying to stifle an itch that hadn't quite satisfied itself in settling an argument with neither fists nor words, but with cool, clean, and unrepentant blood lust.

"Either way," the pirate captain eventually spoke again, head canting his direction, expression darkly amused, "If it isn't just my imagination, aren't you a little bit more aggressive than usual?"

But this question wasn't begging answer, and so oddly out of place in their rhetoric that the swordsman knew that if he gave enough of a shit to ask for embellishment, he'd be giving one shit too many. Yet, still unnerving that as the man sometimes seemed to be in love with the sound of his own voice, the majority of what came out of his mouth (when not entirely in ire by Luffy's proximity, flustered, or a mixture of both) was oddly calculated. Mostly astute. Careful. Much as his fluid movements in crossing the threshold of bodies, sidestepping a dirty hand that twitched in its owner's unconscious state as he closed the distance between them, stopping just far enough away that the legs of their pants brushed together.

"Does my presence provoke you that much?" the older man continued, leaning in until the gap between them went paper-thin and his breath fell hot against the swordsman's lips. "Does it offend you? I wonder... I wonder..."

_I wonder...._

"Not exactly that," he replied in a near-whisper, followed by a lick of his lips that touched the doctor's own by proximity as he dared to look up and into the other man's eyes in a way he often tried to avoid. Because every time he met Law's gaze, he could feel the darkness pooling beneath the golden exteriors of such outwardly pretty, pretty, so very pretty windows to the soul like a blackened oilslick over the ocean, staining the shimmer of its surface. With a plunge of his fingertips deep inside, he wanted to turn it over into his palms and possess it, purify it, and dirty it. No one else could see what he saw, they only knew what they were expected to see, and therefore-

Sometimes he imagined that he could give new name to it. He could own it.

Claim it the way that he did his mouth, feeling a genuine smile manifest there in a delicate, spoiled curl, as though Law's lips could turn down rather than up and the expression would read the same, depending on a one's interpretation of it. It only incensed Zoro further, fingernails tugging into black-blue hair, kiss deepening, opening up and roughly claiming the older man with the edge of teeth sliding against soft flesh and tongue soothing the burn with the paint of his saliva.

Because Zoro was all fighter and not any-such lover; as in all things where desire reigned, he wanted to have supremacy, subjugation, and dominion. For any and all tired, lonely, and sad moments secreted in the others black heart and behind his pacific demeanor, Zoro longed to wrench himself in their stead -- that nothing he ever did should come without his name falling from Law's lips first and foremost. Every time the man lay with any other lover, he would long for the lineature of a swordsman first. Every time a depraved thought crossed his mind, it was Zoro's bare flesh he would desire first. Zoro first, no deviations and no digressions and no second thoughts -- every road should lead back to Zoro. Such was the power of his intent. The fighter's intent.

 _Only I can see the darkness inside you_ , he thought, and he wanted to take ownership of it before it consumed him first.

At his own risk. Perhaps.

Because Law; both a fighter and a lover but so much more the former, deep down; would never categorize himself as narrowly as a fighter's lover for all that it meant. He knew. The knowledge lighting his eyes, coloring them lust-dark, gleaming beneath short but thick lashes before they fell to a close entirely with the slightest whimper caught between them. Intent. The sound of nasal inhalations and exhalations through a tangle of mouth and tongue, desperate and wet, and so loud in the everpresent bustle in the village streets. A humming white noise of civilization's comings and goings that were given as little mind as the carnage beside them. A groan melded into that ambiance as though it belonged when a hand slid into his own and fingers clenched together in a simple show of affection, slick with blood.

A light squeeze, as if to say, 'I've needed this. You. Everything.'

The older man's body subtly curved like the slip of a katana's edge against Zoro's own and ever as sharp. Always, there was that subtle tension in his posture, something lurking and dangerous beneath a relaxed exterior -- battle-ready, maybe, if the swordsman had to think of one way to describe it. Honed. Deadly. Whatever it was, it called out to him the way that any finely-wrought weapon might have upon some common display -- or pried from an enemies cold, dead hands -- to test its strength with his own.

Gooseflesh skittered across Zoro's arms.

He realized then, the itch digging furiously under his skin was much the same that he felt in his mind when his swords weren't close at hand. It didn't always matter, but there was a cool, calm, centering effect when he knew that they were beside him, should he want them. It wasn't necessary, but magnetic in effect. Some strange underlying feeling that'd seemed to choose its focal point between his shoulder blades -- and despite that, somehow, his hand remained tangled in Law's own with the other in his hair as he licked into his mouth as though his life itself depended on it.

Only upon realizing this did he allow himself to slowly part away from him and breathe him in and out, lust touching the natural scent of his skin.

Zoro's back itched and then it ached. And Law's gaze, though heavy beneath the soot of his eyelashes, was unwavering -- characteristically neutral, detached and aloof. Casual. Watching him with the most I-Don't-Give-A-Fuck expression.

" _Zoro-ya_." Breathy, colored with desire, a drawl and a sigh, contradicted the look in the older man's eyes. "It turns you on, doesn't it? -- when I watch you spill blood. That is the difference I can sense."

That itch down below the skin and into the bone, through the marrow and into his beginnings and endings -- it always happened when he skimmed beneath the surface of that man's face, his dark hair and golden eyes, and explored the hidden inner-workings of that razor-sharp soul that soothed his own while splitting it into near halves by the same elegant brush of his tattooed hand.

"You don't really know, do you, Law?"

Blood had never been necessary.  
Blood was merely circumstantial.

But he wanted Law. Wanted to lay claim on him -- _be claimed by him_. Wanted to be splayed wide open by him and fucked deeply and thoroughly. Wanted to bite into his skin as he came and find out if his blood were as rich and red as the taste and texture of his lust.

And as he pulled Law back into him, trying to convey this with the hot, insistent press of his mouth, unashamedly kissing him in the middle of the street, a lesser man might have confessed that there was an immediate feeling of love and devotion somewhere tucked in there too, in the midst his fascination. A lesser man might have been driven insane, might have trembled in the wake of his emotions, caught in the throes of such a multifaceted, beautiful, and talented man.

If, that was, he were a lesser man.

He wasn't.

Yet deep down in his bones, he couldn't help but tremble, nonetheless.


End file.
